[HOT] June 2013 Board Meeting Minutes

[Joseph Reeves]

Dear all,

tl;dr June's board meeting took place via conference call at the end of the
month. A number of items, both ongoing and new were discussed, including
Working Groups (List readers, please get involved if you'd like to!), sys
admin hiring and the potentials (positive and negative) of UAV usage.

A quick summary can be found below,

Thanks, Joseph

Wiki Summary
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team/Meetings/Board/20_June_2013
GDoc Minutes

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UmLO9bZqTmMka-A22Vkl0CDgBPY26Nlkc1Mtkys4N14/edit#
 Summary

Another busy Board meeting building on previous discussions and introducing
new topics; main points are as follows. The HOT strategy document continues
to be worked upon as does input into the Activation Protocol / Activation
and Technical Working Groups. Meetings for the later two were to be held
with the community on IRC (these will have happened by the time these
minutes become public). We will soon be interviewing / appointing somebody
for the advertised Sys Admin position. We are looking to nominate a HOT
member to the position of CyberSteward with CitizenLab. We discussed the
possibility of a Board face-to-face meeting; SotM Birmingham is one
possible potential, although not all Board members will be able to attend.
We will continue to investigate funding potentials for a meeting that can
be better attended. On the subject of funding, there was some confusion as
to the requirement of a solicitation license; we are still unclear about
the rules in this area and will assume for now that a license is required
and that we are currently unable to solicit for donations.

UAV usage for HOT produced imagery was discussed considerably. Board
members agree that this technology is exciting and of enormous possible
benefit, but concerns were raised regarding HOT's liability as both an
imagery producer and in the event of damage or injury caused by our use of
these vehicles. At present we are not insured against the consequences of a
UAV accident and we are unaware of what the potential liability may be; in
this respect UAV usage is dramatically different from our other activities
in the field. We are aiming to answer our current questions and draft a
policy concerning the use of UAVs. Mikel raised the issue of making our
project reports openly accessible and informed us that Robert Soden will be
writing an account of the Haiti response. Kate raised the issue of project
scoping on paid time as currently this is an activity that often goes
unfunded; this fits with a broader issue of time tracking and needs to be
discussed further. Nicolas introduced a number of topics that we were
unfortunately unable to discuss due to time constraints; these can be
followed up via email.
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